The blog for the cult Manhattan cable-access TV show that offers viewers the best in "everything from high art to low trash... and back again!" Find links to rare footage, original reviews, and reflections on pop culture and arthouse cinema.

Monday, June 17, 2013

As
I've noted many, many times on the Funhouse TV show, the pop culture
of the Sixties is the gift that keeps on giving and giving and giving
– each time you think you know
all of the most interesting artists and entertainers from that
period, you become aware of another one who created some truly
mind-roasting work. Such is the case with Fred Mogubgub, an animator
whose body of work might be small, but is deeply deserving of a
larger cult.

I
have an institution and an individual to thank for my becoming
acquainted with Mogubgub (more on his odd-sounding name below). The
institution is the soon-to-be-movin' Whitney Museum, which included
two of his best-known shorts in an exhibit they called “Sinister
Pop.” (The exhibit was a lot of fun, but it only partially seemed
to adhere to the “sinister” label.)

Some
of the paintings were a little ominous in tone, but the underground
films they chose to show were very un-sinister (Andy Warhol eating a
hamburger on camera; George Kuchar's masterful “Hold Me While I'm
Naked”; the trailer for A Bout de Souffle),
except for two items (“Scorpio Rising” and Lynch's “Alphabet”).
In a corner of the room they had the shorts with which I'll be
closing off this post... and my mind fairly reeled.

Once
I looked up Mogubgub (writing that name over and over is a
side-benefit of doing a tribute to the gent), I found that one
individual online has been mounting a sort of one-man campaign to
keep FM's work alive. Richard O'Connor has posted Mogubgub's animated shorts on YouTube and written a number of blog posts imparting
biographical info, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and critical
appraisals of Mogubgub's work as an animator, fine artist, and “idea
man” for ad campaigns. (As I wrote this, I then discovered the
wonderful FM-related items that Michael Sporn has uploaded to
his blog.)

First,
a word about the gent's name: the Wikipedia entry for the artist
notes that Fred himself said that his surname derived from the sound his Lebanese
ancestors made when drowning. O'Connor, however, tells a story in one of his
articles in which Fred M. was asked by one of his animator colleagues
why he had changed the family name to
simply “Mogub.” Fred thought people would laugh at the full name,
but his colleague encouraged him to let them laugh, and make himself
memorable with the full name. (O'Connor has indeed verified in correspondence with me that Mogubgub was Fred's family name and not just an artist's pseudonym.)

Born
in 1928, he served in WWII and then attended the Art Students League.
Although he wound up returning to fine art in his later years, he
became an animator as a young man and quickly discovered he could
make money at it by working in advertising. In 1961, he formed the
firm Ferro Mogubgub Schwartz with two friends and wound up
revolutionizing the TV ad with quick cuts. He maintained that the
viewer could easily digest a lot of imagery in a short amount of time – he felt that commercials, and most
films in general, were too slow. He was obviously way ahead of the curve here, operating on a severely "Sixties" wavelength at the very outset of the era.

In
between the ads he produced a piece of animation for
Jerome Robbins' Broadway production of the “black humor” play
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm
Feelin' So Sad. His animation reportedly ran before the
play started – it most certainly has what later came to be known as
the Sixties look, but keep in mind that this play debuted in 1963.
The B'way cast included Jo Van Fleet, Austin Pendleton, Tony Lo
Bianco, and Barbara Harris. Harris was the only performer to also
appear in the really awful movie version of the play, which featured
an odd narration by the dead father, played by Jonathan Winters.

FMS
had big clients, including the Ford Motor Company. O'Connor notes
that the ads created for Ford by FMS “accelerated the action [of
the commercial]. Scenes could be one second, less than one second,
always long enough to convey the shot's meaning without overstaying
its welcome.” Mogubgub created other notable campaigns for Pontiac
(using comedian Victor Borge) and Life Savers, for whom he created the
tagline, “Have you ever heard anyone say ‘no’ to a Life Saver?”

Mentioned
in a 1966 Newsweek article on Pop Art (found here) as “a leading pop adman,” Mogubgub was simultaneously
working on his short animated features. The most important of these
is “The Pop Show,” which I'll discuss at the close of this piece. He also contributed drawings to The East Village Other.

Mogubgub
was aware of how to attract the public's interest – one of his best
stunts found him having a three-story mural, which asked for two million dollars, painted on the outside of
the building in which he had his studio. The building is i.d.'ed as being on Sixth Avenue, but
Steven Heller's blog says it was located on Third Avenue and 59th St.

Upon
discovering his work I had hoped that he had made a feature film. He
did, but all copies of it are apparently gone. The film, called The
Day I Met Zet, was 71 minutes long and reportedly had 72,000 shots
in it. (O'Connor mentions that it was shown once on WNET,
the PBS station here in NYC.)

It
took him three years to make the picture, but after he was advised to
change it in certain ways by a potential distributor he started it
again from scratch. The best Mogubgub stunt is tied up with the film:
when it was turned down by the New York Film Festival, he protested
outside the festival screenings with a sign reading “Screw the New
York Film Festival.” He eventually burned a canister of film in a
garbage pail – although it wasn't Zet, the story
got him some attention.

I
have very fond memories of the next project that Mogubgub was
involved in: the Sunday morning children’s show “Make a Wish”
hosted by Tom Chapin (Harry’s brother). The show (which ran from
’71-’76) was educational but also reflected the
stream-of-consciousness, quick-cut spirit of the era, and thus
animation producer Al Broadax (of Yellow Submarine)
wisely recruited Mogubgub to do segments for the show.

In
the Seventies Mogubgub moved away from animation – according to
Steven Heller's blog, he threw his cameras into the Hudson River! –
and moved back to his first love, painting. O’Connor has posted
several photos of Fred M’s
paintings, and he has pointed out “[Mogubgub's] painting couldn't appear
more removed from his films. The films are frenetic and seemingly
scattered, whereas the paintings are detailed and painstakingly
rendered.”

Mogubgub
returned to animation as a freelancer. He did commercials for cigars
and candy bars, and even worked on a music video. In the 80s he
continued painting while freelancing as an animator. He animated
several commercials for the Buzzco
company, including spots for
cigars and "Bit O Honey.” He also worked on an ad campaign for a local Minnesota UHF station that was called “TV
Heaven” (see image below).

He
died at the age of 61 in 1989 and is ripe for rediscovery. At its
best, his work did encapsulate an entire era, but his talent extended
beyond the “pop” sphere. I’m glad that O’Connor has provided
us with so much background information on the man, and I hope his
works get further exposure in the years to come — and can anybody
find a copy of that damned “Zet” movie?

*****

For
those who believe that “everything is on the Net,” I point out
that not a single photograph of Mogubgub has been uploaded. Instead
we can see him talking in Antonello Branca's documentary “What's
Happening?”

The
film offers a valuable look at artists in the “pop” period
(including the major, museum-friendly names). Among the interviewees
(speaking amidst images of their work and some great shots of NYC in
the late Sixties) are Ginsberg, Leon Kraushar, Lichtenstein, Warhol,
Rauschenberg, an intriguing woman named Marie Benois, and Monsieur
Mogubgub:

You
NEED TO SEE this wonderful animated version of Don McLean's “American
Pie” that doesn't visualize the song per se, but offers many
memorable images as the tune plays. Mogubgub was one of several
animators who worked on the piece, but he also gets a “Production”
credit, and the short definitely is edited in the manner of his solo
endeavors.

Three
later pieces by Mogubgub: an excerpt from the 1983 R.O. Blechman film
The Soldier’s Tale. O'Connor notes the main
animator is Tissa David, and FM's section starts at 2:08:

A
1984 music video for the band Khmer Rouge. The video was signed by
photographer Nat Finkelstein, but he collaborated with Mogubgub:

And
a group of ads from the late Eighties for a station called “TV
Heaven” (a rerun channel that was on only in St. Cloud and
Rochester, Minnesota). The Fred/Alan blog explains the background for this ad campaign (yes, that's Dr. John singing) and how their work on it was influenced by the films
of Fred Mogubgub, whom they eventually hired to work on the
animation:

I
close out with the three films that define Mogubgub's fast-cut “pop”
style. The first, “Enter Hamlet” (1965), is an amazing experiment
Mogubgub did for the the School of Visual Arts with animators Irene
Trivas and Sylvia Davern.

The
trio came up with an illustration for each and every word in the
famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet,
as read by Maurice Evans. The fact that some of these pictures are
seen for barely a second or two makes this a true “trip”:

Mogubgub's
most trenchant statement on consumer culture (and logo design) is
“The Great Society” (1967), an assemblage of shots of dozens and dozens
of products from the mid-Sixties. This is a perfect time capsule, as
well as a kinetic reworking of the Warhol Campbell soup can and
Brillo box concepts:

The
seminal work is the aforementioned short “The Pop
Show” (1966),
which was conceived of
as a trailer for a television series, and
does lead you to believe at points that Mogubgub is referring to a
dream film in his head with an assemblage of performers who could've
worked together in that era: Alan Arkin, Liza Minnelli (whose name is
misspelled), and Victor Spinetti).

This
short requires several viewings to catch all the imagey (and simply
because it so damned fun). The young lady trying out consumer
products in a sexy fashion is none other than Gloria Steinem (after
her work on Help magazine and well before the
creation of Ms.).

Watching
Mogubgub's work, one is constantly jarred by his innovation.
It definitely makes one wish he had gotten that two million dollars.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The
time has definitely arrived for me to offer up the second part of
this blog post, given that Kaufman was “in the news” again last week, thanks to another bizarre and pointless “Andy is still
among us!” scenario taking place on the Internet.

In
the first half of this post I discussed the recent gallery show
that contained Andy's personal papers and professional paraphernalia.
Among the events that were held to coincide with that show were a
number of Kaufman-related video screenings and panels in a series
called “Andy Kaufman’s 99 cent tour,” held at the Participant Inc gallery. I was only able to attend two of these
events, but I feel that one of them was so special that it needs to
be recounted in detail – and then on to more rare clips that are
“hiding in plain sight” online....

The
panel was initially announced to be MTV VP and journalist Bill
Flanagan, the talented musician (and vinyl-holic) Lenny Kaye, and
Richard Belzer – the last-mentioned dropped out and was replaced by
Kembra Pfahlera (and who would *you* rather see?). Also added to the
panel were another music critic and Janine Nichols, a former colleague of Willner's
from Saturday Night Live.

Willner
moderated the panel in a friendly, informal style, playing LPs on a
small record player he brought with him – an obvious nod to Andy's
original standup act. At the outset Willner showed us albums he
assumed Andy would've loved, a hodgepodge of vinyl oddities that he
exhibited and then sort of tossed aside. (The one and only jarring
thing about Willner as host was that he literally did leave those
albums sitting on the floor throughout the show – I had to step
over them to use the restroom at the end.)

The
first half of the discussion was all about Andy’s personal record
collection, samples of which were in the Kaufman show at the
Maccarone gallery. It's an odd assortment of singles and LPs,
favoring middle-of-the-road singers, of the Fabian-Connie Francis
variety – nothing to indicate that Andy lived through the later
Sixties (no Beatles, Beach Boys, folkies, acid rock, any of that).
One of the two music critics on the panel noted that it “seemed
like a record collection with all the good records taken out”; the
fact that some family member or friend might’ve lightened the load
was put forth at one point. [NOTE: I’ve
done several searches but couldn’t turn up the name of the
other music journalist; if anyone has it, please put it in the
comments field, and I’ll update this entry.]

Lenny
Kaye, who wielded a printout of the titles in the collection as he spoke, disagreed, and noted there were a lot of
interesting, progressive things in the collection. For instance, a large amount of albums by the African drummer Babatunde
Olatunji, who was one of Andy's (non-Elvis) heroes.

Also,
a number of Brenda Lee singles, a Soupy Sales (a
later one, “Still Soupy After All These Years," signed by Soup to
Andy), and this wonderful item, “Peppermint Stick” by Little
Isidore and the Inquisitors, which was a famous “dirty record” of
its time.

The
two critics and Kaye emphasized how Andy's records were like the pop
culture references in his act — firmly rooted in the Fifties and
seemingly filled with longing for his childhood (they guessed that a
number of the LPs were acquired years after they had initially been
released).

The
discussion then turned to Andy’s act, his links to the
Fifties/early Sixties and his constant absorption of TV when young.
Pfahler was asked to speak about Andy as a “performance artist,”
and she answered quite eloquently that his sincerity was the key. She
pointed to the times he sang during his standup act, and noted that
he was truly feeling the songs, even though he was “supposed” to
be performing them to make people laugh. Willner followed this by
playing a snippet of the Slim Whitman tune “Rose Marie,” which
Andy famously performed with utter sincerity on the NBC Letterman
show — while wearing a turban and a loincloth.

Kaye
and the two critics discussed Andy’s integration of music into his
act — from the Mighty Mouse theme to his conga numbers to the
full-on bizarre moments, like the performance of “Rose Marie.” At
this point the two panelists who contributed the most interesting
insights were Willner and his predecessor as music coordinator at
Saturday Night Live, Janine Nichols (aka Janine Dreyer).

Nichols offered her recollections of Andy, among them his entrusting her with
his beloved portable record player and the records he played on
it onstage. She noted that back in the pre-Internet/YouTube
days, she would often receive viewer requests for tapes of the Mighty
Mouse theme; she would supply tapes if the correspondent was polite
enough in their request.

She
noted that Andy gave her his records as if they were his children and
felt comfortable enough with her to ask if he could do his required
pre-show mediation in her office. She agreed, and said that each time
that he did SNL, he did indeed disappear inside
her office for close to two hours (she also noted that she never
barged in on him, so she never saw what he was actually doing). Her
(pretty valid) take on Andy’s record collection was that he seemed to have chosen
his favorite singers based on how big a pompadour the singer had.

Willner told of
working with Andy on musical numbers that never wound up appearing on
SNL: an “opera/sword swallowing act” he later
did on Letterman (which became the “Rose Marie” bit above) and
three obscure Elvis tunes he was supposed to do to go along with the
Albert Goldman-bio-inspired sketch in which he played Presley.
Returning to the topic of record collections, Willner also spoke at
length about the occasions in which Andy “hid out” in his office
(he was not the most popular guest by a certain point) and was
mesmerized by certain items in Hal's record collection.

There were two items
that Willner says Andy made him play over and over again. The first
was one of Jerry Lewis' prank phone calls – the one where a man
calls the theater asking for Jerry to mention his friend from the
stage and gets Jerry, who proceeds to fuck with him for a few
minutes. The item below isn't that phone call, but a similar one from
the Jer-sanctioned CD “Phoney Phone Calls”:

What was interesting
about hearing this in a gallery on Houston St. was that barely anyone
in the audience even tittered – Jerry is a hard sell in the art
community downtown. The second thing Andy doted on was the famous
live recording of Elvis losing his shit while singing “Are You
Lonesome Tonight?”

Willner
closed the evening by performing himself, doing a bit he saw Andy
rehearse in his office, but which Andy never performed on a TV show.
Andy loved Wilner’s “CO-STAR” album of Cesar Romero so much
that he worked out a ventriloquist act to go with one of the tracks,
in which Cesar plays a lothario hitting on a manicurist in a hotel.

Andy
acted out the manicurist part (which is unheard on the record –
thus the “costar” aspect; the listener was supposed to “act”
with the record), while he had a dummy “lip-synch” to the Romero
dialogue. Willner used a Knucklehead Smiff dummy (!) with an NYU
hoodie on as Romero, while he took Andy's part and played the
manicurist.

As
with all public events Willner takes part in (usually as a
producer-organizer, never to my knowledge as a performer), the panel
was indeed a one-of-a-kind event. Ensconced in the
front row of the audience were Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. Laurie
watched with rapt attention, smiling broadly – I had forgotten that
she has her own trove of Kaufman stories (which were recounted in this interview). Lou was asleep throughout most of the evening,
but I guess his recent health troubles explain his condition.

Following
the show, one video clip was shown: Andy's audition
tape for SNL, in which he recited the lyrics of
“MacArthur Park” very quickly, two times. Then he did the intro
to the Superman TV show in a country bumpkin
voice. That latter part is up on YouTube:

As
for the newest “Andy isn't dead” hoax, here is the most in-depth article about it. All I can note is that it was verified that Andy
did father a child as a teen, and the child in question was female
(check it in his Wikipedia entry). And now onto a few of the many
rarities that have turned up online....

On
more familiar turf, here he is with co-conspirator Bob Zmuda, fooling
around on a kids show called Bananaz
in 1979. Zmuda comes on a professor discussing the theory of “psycho-
genesis” (in which you're encouraged to stay in the place that you
were conceived by your parents). It's a very interesting example of a
case where the folks on the show expected Andy to do something weird,
as did the studio audience, so it seems like no one was truly
deceived here, but it is fun:

Some
of the clips that appeared in their entirety at the Participant Inc
shows are up online in fragmented form, including this bit of The
Slycraft Hour, a 1981 Manhattan access show, in which Andy
does a weird Slavic accent, but keeps up his “I’m From Hollywood”
bit, and does finally wrestle a woman in the studio:

And
onto two clips that show Andy when his health was becoming an issue.
First, doing an interview with Tom Cottle (a man with amazing hair).
Kaufman stays out of character for the whole time, discussing his
childhood, the “TV shows” he did in his bedroom, and the fact
that his parents “were worried that I was crazy.”

It's a quite
touching piece, where he's really serious; he even offers a fully
serious discussion of his love of pro-wrestling, including his
attempt to resurrect “the Buddy Rogers atmosphere.”

It's
one of three times I've seen what you might call “the real Andy”
on film or tape (the other two being the backstage interview at the end of the “real Andy Kaufman” film by Seth Schultz, and a Tonight Show
segment on which he's interviewed by a seemingly snarky Steve Martin,
who's guest-hosting for Carson and asks Andy if his main goal is to
make the audience feel embarrassed).

Andy
coughs a little during that interview, as he does in his last TV
appearance, where he's dressed in the Foreign Man outfit, but serves
primarily as a host for music-videos and in-studio live appearances.
The show was a pilot for a series called “The Top,” and if you
need a time-reference, I'll simply note that Andy touts Cyndi Lauper
as an up-and-coming talent:

Those
last two clips would be very sad notes to go out on, so I will leave you
with this delightful song from a Midnight Special
appearance. Introduced by K.C. (of the “Sunshine Band”). This
kinda sums up Andy's weirdness in one little package (except the
audience is digging it).